Posts Tagged ‘GAC (coordinated anarchist groups)’

On December 16, the Supreme Court reduced the sentences of comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar, accused of placing a bomb in the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza in October 2013, repealing the initial sentence of 12 years that was dictated by the National Court to 4 years and 6 months.

This decision was made after partially received an appeal by the defense for the comrade Francisco Solar, who asked that they should not be convicted for the crimes of terrorist damage and separate injuries as if they were the result of two different actions as it was originally in the National Court. In addition the defense noted that the comrades took care when they placed a small homemade device to attack the religious symbol of established power and that they did not intend to cause any injury to any person. To reinforce this defense it noted that at the time of the attack the Basilica was closed to the public and that in addition the device did not contain shrapnel and that they gave a warning before the device was detonated. (more…)

Today March 30, 2016, lawyers of the compas Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar were notified that the sentence of the High Court condemns the anarchists to 5 years in prison on charges of “injury”, plus 7 years for “damage with terrorist purpose”, with a total of 12 years in prison for each of them. They were acquitted of the charges of “belonging to a terrorist organization and conspiracy” against the Monastery of Montserrat.

Facing the condemnation of our comrades we have the challenge of extend the struggle and solidarity, to defend our ties and our ideas, to deny that their world is reduced to the four walls that keep them locked up.

Today, Thursday, March 10, the third and final hearing in the trial of our comrades Mónica and Francisco took place. There was mainly the summing up of the lawyers for both the defence and the prosecution, and that of the Public Prosecutor.

The hearing began with the expert witnesses called by the defence, who submitted reports on the comparative study of DNA from a number of objects found after the explosion, and DNA of Francisco and Mónica extracted from objects taken from their cells. They confirmed what had already been exposed in the reports: there is absolutely no correspondence.

Subsequently, the judge asked whether the parties confirmed their initial conclusions, a question to which the lawyer of the specific accuser, the woman who was in the Pilar at the moment of the explosion, confirmed wanting to maintain the charges of “damage” and “injury”, but asked for the charges of membership and conspiracy to be dropped, significantly lowering the request to 12 years and a day for each and asking for compensation of 102,000 euro. (more…)

On Tuesday evening, March 8th 2016, we went with banners, flyers and sprays outside the Spanish Embassy in Athens (on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, in the Makrygianni district) in a minimum display of solidarity with captive comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar, who stand trial in Madrid.

The banners read: “All laws are terrorism – Freedom for Mónica and Francisco”; and: “A life of combat – Prisoners to the streets – Freedom for our bodies – Madrid, 8-9-10/3/16”. Walls of the embassy building were tagged with: MONICA Y FRANCISCO LIBRES (“Mónica and Francisco free”). Among the slogans shouted (mostly in Spanish) were the words “Mateo Morral: Presente” – as well as “Javier Recabarren: Presente” in view of the week of actions in Chile in memory of the 11-year-old comrade. (more…)

We call for solidarity with our comrades Monica and Francisco, the week
of February 29 to March 6, to inform and make visible their situation!

THEY CAN’T STOP US

On 8, 9 and 10 March 2016 the trial against the anarchists Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar will be held at the National Court in Madrid. The two comrades are more than two years in pre-trial detention.

The charges against them are three of [property] damage, conspiracy and membership of a criminal organization with terrorist aims, which is why the prosecution calls for a sentence of 44 years in prison for each.
Their arrests were the first in a series of anti-terrorist operations in Catalonia, Madrid and Palencia, operating under the name of Operation Pandora and Piñata totaling more than 40 people charged to be part of this alleged “terrorist” organization. (more…)

Prosecutor Teresa Sandoval, of the Audiencia Nacional, has submitted the prosecution’s demand to the 6th tribunal of the Audiencia Nacional, a demand that reflects the investigators’ thesis on comrades Monica and Francisco’s lives.

In their thesis the powerful falsely maintain that GAC (Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados) are an action group responsible for several explosive and incendiary attacks, which the group allegedly claimed. The inquisitor in charge is trying to take advantage of the antiterrorist hysteria caused by the attacks perpetrated by ISIS religious fascists in Europe, remarking that ‘the insurrectional affinity groups, like the jihadist cells, are perfectly clear about their generic enemy and therefore need no superior command in order to set an attack in motion.’

The prosecutor acknowledges that before the attack on the Basilica del Pilar a warning telephone call was made to a nearby beauty centre so that the authorities were alerted. As the receivers believed it was a joke they didn’t alert the authorities and the device detonated while people were inside the building; as a result a person suffered ear damage.

Following this rambling on terrorism, the sentence demanded against the comrades is 44 years each, comprising:

Belonging to a terrorist organization: 9 years

Ear damage caused to a victim: 12 years

Terrorist attack (the explosion at the Basilica del Pilar): 18 years

Conspiracy to commit similar attacks (alleged reconnaissance of the Basilica de Montserrant in Barcelona): 5 years

The threat of stratospheric sentences is nothing new to the comrades: at the trial for the ‘Caso Bombas’ in Chile the prosecutors’ request was 20 years for Monica and 25 for Francisco. It won’t be the threat of years in prison made by the Spanish State that will stop insurrection or the will to struggle.

International and insurrectional solidarity for the destruction of all sentences!

Eternal love in revolt for the comrades… Always ready for action, not a step back!

Almost a year ago, the Spanish State began a campaign of repression against anarchists, arresting dozens, including nine in late October, and five more in November of this year. Their imprisonment is justified with the invention of a fictional terrorist group, the GAC-FAI-IRF. No attack has ever been claimed with this set of acronyms, and the GAC (Coordinated Anarchist Groups) are only the authors of a recent book, Contra la Democracia(eerily similar to the Tarnac Affair and The Coming Insurrection in France, 2008).

On Saturday we will rally in solidarity with those arrested, at 6:00pm at the corner of E Lake St & Minnehaha Ave in Minneapolis.

If last week we awoke to 9 comrades arrested in Barcelona and Manresa, of which one has to stay in prison [Enrique Costoya Allegue] and the rest have been released pending trial in an extension of Operation Pandora, and the extension of preventive prison to Mónica and Francisco, yesterday, November 4, we awoke to a new beat. In this case, Operation Ice in which they have been arrested 5 companions of the collective Straight Edge Madrid. Again the state hits.

The allegations, belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims, damages and apology of terrorism.

The henchmen of the Information Brigade of the National Police say they have found material for making explosives, gunpowder and bomb-making manuals.

It alleges them responsible for the attack with incendiary devices against four bank branches in Madrid as well as other actions in Barcelona. In addition, as has become customary, they are accused of relations with GAC (Grupos Anarquistas Coordinados) – coordinated anarchist groups.

In this case, they have seized documents and propaganda concerning Anarchist groups, for them a confirmation of their coordinated relationship with them, referring specifically to the comrades arrested last March 30 in Operation Piñata.

So it goes in the Spanish state, operation after operation still beating us.
But whatever they do they will not get us to stop fighting.
Freedom for anarchist prisoners!
Solidarity with the repressed!
Innocent or guilty, just anarchists!

On Wednesday October 28 nine of us were arrested in connection with a new anti-terrorist operation orchestrated by the Catalan Regional Police in collusion with court number 3 of the Spanish National Court. After the ransacking and looting of our homes and the Libertarian Ateneo de Sants (an anarchist social center in Sants) we were taken to different police stations on the outskirts of Barcelona. The next day we were delivered to the Civil Guard and transferred to Madrid. On Friday at noon we were brought before Judge Juan Pablo Gonzalez. The judge ordered two of us to be released with charges, 6 of us to be bailed upon payment of a bail surety and unconditional imprisonment for our comrade who is currently locked up in Soto del Real prison.
We the detainees who at present are back on the street wish to make a series of reflections and political positions:

The generic accusation against all 9 of us is “belonging to a criminal organization with terrorist aims.” Specifically we are charged with being part of ‘GAC-FAI-IRF,’ which as we all know is a concept that has been constructed by the police. A set of acronyms which they have quite calculatedly mixed together – the coordination of anarchist collectives (GAC) along with the ‘signature’ used internationally by some groups to claim acts of sabotage (FAI–IRF).

The construction of this organizational framework gives the police all of the repressive
resources that the anti-terrorism laws provide: closed courts, greater legal uncertainty, much tougher sentences for comrades convicted of carrying out certain actions, isolation, special prison regimes, the criminalization of personal friendships / partners and relatives, amplified media coverage and social stigmatization etc. It is enough to say that during the whole process of our detention – from the moment we saw our homes being invaded and looted right up until we were brought before the judge – we did not even know what we were being accused of. (more…)

Spain: A digital media site of disinformation has “uncovered” a Prisons Circular recently distributed to its workers demanding extreme measures to protect themselves against possible suspicious packages received between 23 and August 30th. The reason for this is the “discovery” by the Information Service of the paramilitary Civil Guard of the international call for solidarity with anarchist prisoners from 23 to 30 August.

According to these coppers, the poster is “much more aggressive than the last year’s” In fact, you can read the legend “fire to the prisons and jailers”, which leads them to conclude that the “main objective of the anarchist movement” at the moment are Prison Officers “or any persons related to the facilities of the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions”. All because someone added “and the Jailors” to the traditional “Fire to The Prisons” slogan. (more…)

On June 1 we got the great news that three of the five comrades being held in preventive detention, accused of being part of a terrorist group under Operation Piñata (including one who was already arrested and imprisoned in Operation Pandora) are being released without bail. They still have all their charges and have to sign in frequently at court, and two of them are prohibited from leaving the country.

Operation Pandora was launched in December in Catalunya, and Operation Piñata on March 30 all across the Spanish state but focused in Madrid. The operations resulted in the arrests of 26 anarchist comrades (plus the arrests of over a dozen more for resisting the raid on a social center) on anti-terrorism charges, the raids of dozens of houses and social centers, the theft of cash, and the seizure of computers, harddrives, phones, etc.(more…)

In the night of January 30th, 2015, the 7 comrades who were still imprisoned following the arrests on the 16th of December 2014 as part of Operation Pandora were released.

One day before, the instructing judge of the Audiencia Nacional (Madrid) permitted access to the investigative file, and what we know at the moment is what has been circulated through the website of Mossos d’Esquadra in a press communiqué. They are facing charges such as membership in GAC (Coordinated Anarchist Groups), attacks against banks, posting parcel bombs (one to the Archbishop of Pamplona, one to a member of the fascist congregation Legionaries of Christ, and others to Italian companies), while “they are linked”—always according to the police—with the explosive attacks against the Cathedral of Almudena in Madrid (February 7th, 2013) and the Basilica of the Pillar in Zaragoza (October 2nd, 2013), the latter having led to the indictment and pretrial detention of our comrades Mónica and Francisco. (more…)

Democracy justifies itself by principles which, though they are repeated a thousand times, do not become true, but have become so internalised that even its opponents believe in them. The popular idea of the goodness of this regime has become so ingrained and immobile that change appears impossible, no one now proposes any other forms of organisation, or even other forms of living.

To us the daughters of democracy, they have told us that this is the best of all regimes, our parents and grandparents lived under a system where coercion and repression were more direct, and now that things are gentler, we are obliged from birth to accept it. How is it that we are becoming a generation more impoverished than those before, without going through a war? Because of a situation that is imposed by this system as inevitable.

The free association in which democracy is said to be based is nothing of the sort, because from birth we are obliged to belong to this regime without being allowed to choose other forms of life. We do not associate freely within educational institutions because other ways of learning are made illegal, we do not associate freely within work because we do not control what we produce, nor the time clock, nor do we have the capacity to organise ourselves together with companions.

Universal suffrage, a concept that throughout history has been praised as a victory for increasingly greater parts of the population, puts itself in question. They have always told us that the vote is free when in reality it is a limited choice, because consciousness is not free, it is subject to the propaganda of the regime and the culture defended by the groups in power. It also denies freedom by reducing it to no more than giving an opinion, “yes” or “no” or on what party is going to govern, denying us the possibility to develop other proposals for living together. And because it is anonymous, is there no freedom of expression?

In democracy we give up our interests, the satisfaction of our needs and the organisation of human relations and of life, into the hands of others. By means of the vote we supposedly choose those who can better represent our interests, but here we collide with reality: the political parties defend their own interests in accordance with the rules they themselves have established, they seek to accumulate levels of economic and political power in order to maintain their domination and influence on the rest of society. (more…)